Lancashire Lass

I

THEY said Mary Ellen was to be married off the pit brow.

They were the neighbors in Number 4 Court, off Duke Street; two or three dozen of them, living in houses that looked upon the cobbled square — mysterious houses that appeared to be all back and no front. As a matter of fact, such front as they had was lost in a maze of congested masonry that formed the miners’ section of St. Helens. To reach them one clattered down a covered alley that was like the entrance to a cave, and emerged into the court. There they were, the houses, six of them, all with rear windows and doors to the court.

That court was everything to those who lived in Number 4. It was the playground for the children. It was the gossip exchange for the women as they stood with brooms in their hands, or with forearms swathed in aprons. On reckoning Monday the coal miners squatted there and passed around a beer jug while they divided the pay among the pit gang.

Strictly, they did not say that Mary Ellen was to be married off the pit brow. What they really said was: ‘Ah ’ears Mary Ellen — ye know, owd Tiggem’s lass — is gooin’ to be wed off t’ pit braow.’

And the response always was: ‘Ee! Tha doesna say! Well, ’oo’s a nahce wench. Ah ’ope ’e’s good to ’er. ’Oo’s she bent o’ weddin’?’

‘Aay, that’s the surprise on it, missis. It’s a little chap fra’ Carr Mill way. She en’t known ’im very long. But they tell me ’e’s a nahce little feller. ’E’s geet a bit of a haouse up theer, but ’e works i’ Green’s Colliery.’

Everybody ‘’oped ’e’d be good to ’er.’ But the tone in which the hope was expressed made it look bad for Mary Ellen. It seemed as though they all thought Mary Ellen never would have anyone to be good to her. Even Mary Ellen once had thought it was almost hopeless. There was her father, of course, but he was too much under the thumb of Lizzibuth.

When Alary Ellen was three, her mother died. That was a terrible thing, but not for Mary Ellen’s mother. She had worked like a bought slave since the first day she could stand steadily on her feet, and she took death to her arms with the ardor of a woman receiving her lover.

But it was a terrible thing for Mary Ellen’s father. He was a coal miner. He could not live without a woman. No North-of-England miner could live without a woman, any more than an American Indian in his savage state could live without a horse, or a French peasant could live without a cow. Who was there to get his breakfast before daylight? Who was there to put up his bit of snap and cold tea for the mine? Who to prepare his great mound of food at night, and who to put patches on his moleskin pit trousers? And who would fetch his mug of beer? A man had to have a wife or a mother, and mothers wore out.

So Mary Ellen’s father married again; married a hard-faced, muscular woman, who hated Mary Ellen from the first day.

To her death Mary Ellen would carry the scars of her first encounter with Lizzibuth. All that Mary Ellen wanted was a ‘jam butty,’ which is a piece of bread with jam on it. There was jam and there was bread, but Mary Ellen was the one who wanted it, and that made a difference.

Glaring at the not yet four-year-old Mary Ellen, Stepmother Lizzibuth snarled: —

‘Nasty little brat! Skrikin’ an’ scrawchin’ every minit o’ t’ day! Shut thy maouth, or Ah’ll shut it for thee! Tha’ll geet no jam butty fra’ me.’

Mary Ellen had stared with wide eyes at this apparition who had taken the place of her long-suffering mother. Mary Ellen’s lip trembled. She breathed one great, deep breath. Then she wailed long and loud.

That did it.

Lizzibuth’s bad teeth showed under her upper lip as she grabbed Mary Ellen by what Lancashire knows as the ‘nap’ of the neck.

‘Bloody, nasty nuisance!’ she muttered.

Lizzibuth’s eyes gleamed. She came of a half-mad family. Her father had been known to torture pit ponies by holding lighted matches under their noses.

Mary Ellen could not have silenced those sobs if the heavens had fallen.

One push, and Mary Ellen was in the ash hole.

The ash hole was eighteen inches high and fifteen inches wide. Over it was the fire grate, filled with glowing coals. When the coals dropped through the grate, they fell into the ash hole.

For a matter of seconds, they fell on Mary Ellen’s back.

It was only the fear of what Almighty God might do to her when she died and what the St. Helens police might do to her while she lived that prevented Lizzibuth from placing a foot against Mary Ellen’s buttocks and keeping the child there. As it was, panic took Mary Ellen, and it was some seconds before she crawled away and rolled out her agonies on the kitchen floor.

That night the neighbors heard the row when Mary Ellen’s father came home. They heard the end of it, too, when Lizzibuth picked up her husband’s big plate bearing his dinner and smashed it into the ash hole where Mary Ellen had been. When the story leaked out, the neighbors nodded over their gossip. It looked as if Tiggem was under Lizzibuth’s thumb, all right, all right. ‘Any mon as ’d let a woman chuck ’is dinner into th’ ess ’ole — well, ’e was nowt much of a mon.’

II

That day was typical of Mary Ellen’s childhood. The ash hole, of course, played its part only once. Even Lizzibuth could not hope to try that again and escape uncomfortable notice.

But there were a thousand cruel pin points with which Lizzibuth could prick Mary Ellen. She called her in from the court at the height of the game, whatever it was. She boxed her ears in public and in private, until at twelve Mary Ellen cocked her head when anyone spoke to her. She was deaf in the left car. Long before there was any thought of Mary Ellen going to work, her knees were hard with calluses. Twice a week she scrubbed the stone floor of the kitchen and sanded it. She made beds from the time she had to fall on her little belly on the sheets to reach halfway across. Then there was coal to be dragged ten blocks in a hundredweight wagon.

But even Lizzibuth could not make Mary Ellen miserable all the time. Mary Ellen wanted to be joyful. When she got a chance to play, she played harder than all the rest. It was marvelous to gather round the lamp in the court at night, at the dark hour before the windows went up and calls to bed went out.

’Will-e-e-e!'

‘Jane Ann! Come in ’ere! ’S time to get undressed.'

Around that lamp was an aura of light. Outside of that aura was darkness; the black shadows of the court looked ready to swallow a little girl, although she well knew that in the daytime that black shadow was only Duckworth’s pigeon coop, and that one over there to the right was the door to the Billinges’ washing verandah.

It was beautiful and creepy to be the first one out, to stand with one’s back to the lamp post and wait for the others, promising one’s self: ‘If they’re not aout ’ere before Ah caount two ’undred, IT’ll come at me fra’ yon black ’ole. It’ll ha’ red een an’ ’orns, an’ Ah don’t know what Ah’ll do.’ Then the slow counting of two hundred, striving in the childish agony of her own creation to make it last until the first screeching, diminutive figure shot from a black doorway.

‘Ooh! Is it thee, Mary Ellen? Wheer’s all t’ rest o’ ’um? Shall we play rallyo or London Bridge?’

It was even good to scrub floors. Mary Ellen came of a painfully clean race. No men in the world scrubbed their flesh with such fierceness as did coal miners, or slicked their hair as often. No women were there who kept their homes cleaner than those of Lancashire. They even washed the curbstones once a week, and rubbingstoned the doorstep, until, by the very passion of their cleanliness, they wore it away to a sliver.

It penetrated little Mary Ellen’s mind that there was a great deal of satisfaction in scrubbing a stone kitchen floor. It shone so when it was done, and the sand crunched cleanly under her clogs. It looked nice, she always thought, as she rubbed her knees.

No, not even Lizzibuth could down Mary Ellen; not even with the coal wagon. It was a hard pull with a hundredweight of coal, but there was something irresistibly fascinating about pulling a thing on wheels. Then there was the run back, part of it downhill, when Mary Ellen could sit on the wagon edge and draw a quick breath of painful delight as she whirled down the street and scuffed her clogs at the corner to end the ecstatic ride.

And then, several times Mary Ellen escaped for a whole day. Oh, the beauty of those days among people and things! They were to be dreamed about through ear boxing and coal hauling and floor scrubbing. They were to be relived in her tired mind at night when, safe from Lizzibuth during the hours of darkness, Mary Ellen could be all alone in the little front room where her bed had been since Lizzibuth came.

Once — and it almost hurt to think about the joy of it — it was to a wagonette picnic Mary Ellen went. Only after torturing anxiety that rived her child’s soul was she allowed to go.

The Duckworths had the tickets, because they went to Sunday School, and it was a Sunday School picnic. Mother and Father Duckworth both were going. Father Duckworth must have had several pints on the night he bought the tickets, because it was he who paid thrippence for an extra one, and suggested to Emily that Tiggem’s poor little brat might be taken along.

But Lizzibuth!

Mary Ellen entreated her with agonized eyes but silent tongue for permission to go. Just for this once, Mary Ellen prayed in her heart; just for this once be kind to me. She almost offered to be beaten when she came home, if only she could go — just this once.

The thrippenny ticket decided Lizzibuth. That, and the fact that something was to be gotten for nothing, even though Mary Ellen got it. Her thrifty soul could never see a thrippenny ticket wasted. The day after the picnic that ticket would be worthless; just a yellow slip of cardboard. Now, it meant a thrippenny privilege. Then again, Mary Ellen would be fed, and that would save a couple of meals.

So Mary Ellen went, after an almost sleepless night that was divided between sweats of fear that Lizzibuth would change her mind and shivers of delight as Heaven approached.

Sunup found Mary Ellen on the Duckworth doorstep, alone and happy. She had crept out after her father had gone to the mine and while Lizzibuth was having her second nap. Carefully Mary Ellen dressed in the dark blue muslin, and latched the door behind her as she silently left the house. Lizzibuth would sleep another hour. Surely the Duckworths would be ready by then.

They were n’t. But when Mrs. Duckworth came to the door to put out the milk jug with three ha’pence in it she saw the child. Mary Ellen was a little afraid. Perhaps she had offended.

‘Aay, chilt,’ said Mrs. Duckworth, ‘whatever art tha doing theer a’ this tahme o’ mornin’?’

‘Ah’m waitin’, if ye please, Mrs. Duckworth,’ said Mary Ellen. ‘Ah didna want to be late.’

Mrs. Duckworth gazed down. The milk jug hung from one finger.

‘Bless thy little ’eart! Come in. Joe! Joe! Didst e’er ’ear o’ onythin’ lahke this i’ thy lahfe? ’Ere’s this bit of a wench craouchin’ on t’ doorsill awaitin’ on us. ’Feared she’s baound to be late, she sez. Aay, there’s folk’s araound ’ere as Ah’d lahke to wrop t’ fryin’ pan araound their necks — treatin’ wee uns wi’ soch cruelty as makes ’urn flee aout o’ th’ ’aouse to get away fra’ ’um.’ Mrs. Duckworth glared at Lizzibuth’s back door. ‘’As tha ’ed thy brekker, chilt?’

‘Nay, Ah havna,’ said Mary Ellen, ‘but Ah’m none so ’ungry.’

This was enough, she thought; just to come inside and wait where Lizzibuth could n’t see her.

Big-chested Joe awkwardly patted Mary Ellen’s head.

‘Tha’s goin’ to enjie thysel’ to-day, little wench. Thee see if tha doesna. Dost lahke to ride i’ a wagonette?’

‘Aay, Mr. Duckworth, Ah’ve niver ridden i’ one.’

Joe laughed.

‘Tha’s a quaint little un, naow. An’ tha’s niver ridden i’ a wagonette. What a treat tha’s got i’ store for thysel’! Sit thy daown, little un! Sit thy daown! Give t’ chilt a couple o’ mah rashers, Emily.’

His wife bustled between the hob and the table.

‘Aay, there’s no need o’ that, Jody. If Ah couldna feed an extra maouth once in a while, it’d be a sorry lookaout, naow wouldna it?’

On the way to the Lamb Hotel — which was not a hotel, but a public house — from where the wagonettes were to leave, Mary Ellen had n’t time to feel like an outsider. There was so much to see. Not that she had not seen it before, but she saw it differently now. At other times, it was colored by a box on the ear or a hundredweight of coal. But not now. They were off to the picnic. Jody went ahead, purposefully, almost angrily, although he was in the best of spirits. His miner’s bow legs ploughed on like two spars of a schooner bent in the wind. He was going somewhere, and he looked it.

Mrs. Duckworth was a little behind, trailing two Duckworths by the hand, while one skipped on behind. No one lagged.

Mary Ellen found time to balance on the edge of the curb; then to run very fast and swiftly strike the sole of one clog against the stone flags. The irons with which the clog was shod, like a horse’s hoof, struck sparks. Lizzibuth had caught her once doing that and had jerked out between boxes on the ear: ‘Let me catch—thee doin’ — that again! Wearin’ aout thy — clogs thy feyther’s — got to buy!’

But Lizzibuth was in bed now. At least, she was home.

Then Mary Ellen saw the wagonettes. Was there ever a grander sight anywhere in the world? It was almost too much. Each wagonette had four horses, and the horses had rosettes at their ears. There was a driver on each long seat, with a great thin whip twelve feet long. They were red wagonettes, as brave as could be. Mary Ellen’s heart jumped against her throat when the horses pawed the cobbles and swung their heads with a fine rattle of bright harness.

She was in a mob of children, frantically trying to keep in touch with the Duckworths, and clutching the ticket which Joe had given her.

A red-faced man heaved his way through the throng. To Alary Ellen it was a great milling crowd, a terrifying crowd. There were at least forty children and a dozen or more mothers and fathers.

‘Aw’ them wi’ yaller tickets this way! ’Oo’s geet yaller tickets ’ere?’ bawled the red-faced man.

He stopped just in time to avoid stepping on Mary Ellen.

‘Wharr ’as tha geet?’ he demanded.

She held up her fist and trembled.

‘A yaller ticket! Come on, little un!'

He looked down at her small face. Perhaps he saw something there which made him understand. Then again, perhaps it was the two pints he had had at the Lamb before the wagonettes came.

He bent down.

‘Wouldst lahke to ride wi’ th’ drahver?’ he asked.

Mary Ellen gazed at him wide-eyed. He was a powerful and influential man. He could put her where he wanted, even with the driver. She was speechless, but she nodded. He caught her up in his arms.

‘Hi there, Tom!’ he yelled. ‘Tek this little un up wi’ thee, wilt tha? She’s deein’ to watch thee drahve th’ ’orses.’

It was the same all through the day. Something watched over Mary Ellen, and she was precipitated from one breath-taking situation into another. First it was the driver’s seat, the crack of the whip and the thundering hoofs, and the driver leaning back with his mighty leg on the brake as they went downhill. Then it was the strange man who bought her ginger snaps at Micklehead Green where the picnic was. There were pork pies and Sally Lunns and buns with raisins in. And finally — oh, glory of glories! — there was the foot race for children between five and seven, and Mary Ellen running like the wind to win a box of pencils.

Life could hold no more for Mary Ellen when the wagonettes rolled back to the Lamb. It was full, full to the brim and overflowing. She had been joyful and free. She had been grandly happy. Now, she was just a bit tired, leaning against the driver, watching the swaying backs of the horses in the dusk.

Not even old age can live in retrospect as can a child of the poor. To Mary Ellen the day after the picnic was not one in which to regret the swift passage of time that had carried joy into the limbo of the past. It was a glorious day of remembrance. The scrubbing and sanding of the kitchen floor, the hauling of coal, and Lizzibuth’s sour visage and heavy hand could crowd such memories so that they faded almost, but not quite, away. But they came back, joyful and thrilling. Not even Lizzibuth could keep an eternal vigil over them.

III

Of course, the ear boxing could not go on forever, although the work might. When Mary Ellen was thirteen she left school and went in service — which meant that she was a ‘skivvy’ for a family that had made money in a butcher shop. She was there until she marched out one day with flaming face and angry eyes. Mary Ellen was sixteen then, and her employer, fresh from the meat counter, tried to maul her. Mary Ellen slapped him with all the power of a muscular arm. In that moment she was thankful for floor scrubbing and coal hauling that had given strength to her body.

Mary Ellen could not stay at home. Lizzibuth took care of that. There were only the glassworks and the pit, so Mary Ellen went to Green’s Colliery.

She was straight and strong. She had a full bosom and broad hips. Her neck was a muscular column and her arms swelled with the roundness of strength. She stood on sturdy legs that had run for miles, throwing heavy clogs along the flagged pavements. Mary Ellen was not big, but she was compact.

She had to be strong. Otherwise the mine would have killed her. Mary Ellen went to work on the pit brow.

Tiggem was working on the pit brow now. He had toiled long in the mine. Now his eyes were affected with cataracts, and the dark recesses below the earth were no place for him. Tiggem wheeled picks and helped the check-weigh man on the surface.

On the pit brow, Mary Ellen pulled coal wagons. She knew of the job before she went there, but she did not know how hard it could be.

She wore a broad belt around her waist. From this belt ran two chains, one straight back and the other from the front and between her sturdy legs, to the wagon which ran on tracks behind. All day, Mary Ellen threw her weight in the traces and dragged loads of coal from the pit shaft. It was a fitting thing in a county where men to this day pull barges along canals.

Mary Ellen could not haul wagons for long without acquiring something of the disposition of a horse. That was just what happened. There was the look of a horse in her eyes. When she stood resting, she did not move, not one bit. She stood, just as a horse stands until someone goads him into movement. Her eyes looked straight ahead most of the time, and saw nothing.

About the middle of each afternoon, the wagons grew very heavy. It was as though a giant hand gripped about her middle, squeezing her vitals, yet urging her on against the strain. Mary Ellen’s eyes were sometimes heavy with pain. She did the work of a man. The fact that she was a woman never was considered. For the purposes of the mine she was a man, although she was not paid a man’s wages.

Her father often watched her as she dragged her loads on the pit brow. Tiggem was a kindly man, but he was a Lancashire coal miner. A long way back in his brain there was a vague thought that perhaps Mary Ellen should not be doing this. But women always had done it. That was all he knew. He did not go any further.

Once when it rained heavily and Mary Ellen ploughed through the mud of coal dust with her load, Tiggem came to her and took off his coat. With an almost gentle movement he laid it across her shoulders to cover the thin stuff of her shabby blouse.

‘’Ere, lass,’ he said, ‘put this o’ thy shoulders. ’Appen it’ll keep a bit o’ t’ wet aout.’

Mary Ellen stopped, slowly turned her head, and looked at him. She took off the coat and handed it back.

‘Keep it thysel’,’she said. ‘A bit o’ rain’ll niver ’urt me. Dost think Ah’m so soft Ah’ve got to tek thy coat to keep me dry?’

Then she threw herself against the harness and hauled on.

IV

It was at Carr Mill that Mary Ellen met Tom Sharp. Carr Mill was — well, Carr Mill was just Carr Mill. Everybody knew it. There were trees there. There were seas of waving bluebells. Mary Ellen used to throw herself into them and lie there, a dark spot in the blue beauty. There was a stream, too, at Carr Mill; a rippling, rushing stream full of ‘tiddlers’ and ‘chotheads’ that the boys caught with a bent pin and a worm on the end of a thread line. Mary Ellen once took tiddlers home in a glass jar, only to have Lizzibuth throw them out wriggling into the court. Mary Ellen never forgot how Lizzibuth held her by the arm until the tiddlers wriggled themselves to death on the cobbles.

On one side of the stream at Carr Mill were meadows that were beautiful for picnicking. On the other side was the wood, a marvelous place to roam and imagine one was in the wilds of Canada or Africa or some other place where one would never go.

Like all of her people, Mary Ellen loved the earth. She did not know why. She did not know it was the real reason her countrymen had gone to war repeatedly and piled themselves up in heaps of dead on a foreign soil. She knew it was Heaven to lie in the grass near the stream at Carr Mill and listen to the rushing of the water and watch the swift-shooting swallows.

Tom Sharp, short and dark, with a streak of Norman blood in his veins from a thousand years ago, smiled at her one day as she gathered bluebells in the wood. Tom was really as much of a peasant as England can boast to-day. He could understand why a girl should want to gather bluebells, even though he worked under the ground at Green’s Colliery.

‘They’re nahce, are they not?’ he asked.

She flushed, and bent down for more bluebells.

‘Aay, they are,’ she conceded.

It was the first time she ever had spoken to man like that — a man who just walked up to her. But she thought he did not look as if he meant anything wrong.

‘Wouldst lahke me to pick a few? ’he asked.

‘If you want,’ she answered.

It was no invitation she voiced in the ungracious manner of her county. If he wanted, he could. If he did n’t, he could go his way. It was quite immaterial.

He stayed. He picked bluebells with his stubby, square-ended fingers. Yet he handled gently the flowers with their juicy stems and swaying blooms. In a few minutes he gave her an armful, and their hands touched in the exchange.

Then he stood looking at her. She gazed through the woods. The light came dimly through the closely set trees.

‘Tha belongs i’ St. ’Elens?’ he asked.

‘Aay,’ she answered.

‘En’t Ah seen thee at Green’s?’

‘On t’ pit braow,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘Ah thowt so,’ he said, and looked through the trees as though he sought the same thing she looked for. ‘Dost coom ’ere of’en?’

‘As of’en as Ah can,’ she burst out. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘En’t it, though!’ His eyes lighted. ‘Doesna tha love it? All t’ trees an’ water, and these-’ere bluebells! There’s niver a place onyw’ere that’s prettier nor this. Ah live reight close by.’

‘Does tha?’ She gazed at him with a new interest. Imagine living at Carr Mill, right close by this all the time! Why, he could see it at night when he came home, before he slept and when he awoke!

He hesitated, and then plunged.

‘Wouldst lahke to see mah place?’ he asked, looking anxious. ‘Ah could offer thee a cup o’ tay. Ah ’ve an owd woman as keeps ’aouse for me. Aoutside o’ that, Ah’m all alone.’

He made of it a confidential statement, almost a pleading of loneliness and the expression of a desire to share it with someone. Mary Ellen surprised herself and went.

She was glad when she saw the thatched cottage, low-studded and whitewashed on the outside. It was a beauty. Behind was a chicken coop with a score of birds.

‘Ah made most o’ t’ furniture mysel’,’he said. ‘Per’aps it’s none so much, but — ’

‘W’y, it’s lovely,’ said Mary Ellen. ‘Ah niver seen such nahce cheers. An’ that table! It must a ta’en a sight o’ tahme to do that.’

V

That was how they met. After that, a visit to Carr Mill meant a visit to Tom’s, with tea and buns or bread and marmalade. Carr Mill took on something new. It seemed to Mary Ellen that it belonged to her now. She had a distinct share in it. Soon it became noised about that she and Tom were ‘gooin together,’ although she never spoke of him.

When the cold weather approached, he asked her to marry him. Perhaps it was because it was getting cold and he knew that winter would lessen the frequency of her visits.

‘Mary Ellen,’ he said, ‘Ah do love thee very much. Tha’s coom to mean such a lot, Ah don’t know naow as Ah can get along withaout thee. Wilt chuck that job on t’ pit braow and coom ’ere as mah wahfe?’

It was just as simple as that, and Mary Ellen liked it. Rhetoric would have been out of place with him. She expected no profusion of protestations from him. He would state his case and then abide by the decision like a man.

She made it very quickly. She looked out of the window for just a minute, and the last thing she saw before she turned her face to his was a branch of the rambler roses that grew on the side of the house.

‘Ah will, Tom,’ she said, ‘an’ be glad to. Ah thank ye for askin’ me, an’ Ah ’ll try to make thee a good wahfe.’

Tom rose, bent over, and kissed her forehead.

She was very much surprised when he dropped to his knees at her feet. Lancashire men in her ken did not kneel to their women.

‘Lass,’ he said, ‘tha’s made me very ’appy. Wilt set weddin’ date for as soon as thy can ? Ah’m a bit ’ungry for thee.’

Mary Ellen’s eyes glistened. She took his face between her hands, and for the first time in her life she felt the love of a man’s lips. There was a gentleness about it that moved her heart.

‘Tom,’ she said, ‘tha’s th’ only person i’ all t’ world that iver was ’ungry for me. If tha wants, Ah’ll marry thee naow — this minute.’

That was how Mary Ellen came to be married off the pit brow.